Elite UK Para Sniper Hugh Keir | Surviving the Siege of Musa Qala | Gallantry Award - Combat Story

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
It was the intensity of it.
You'd be talking six attacks a day,of which multiple would be complex
attacks, and for the, you know, theuninitiated complex attack is multiple
different types of weapon systems,multiple flanks, anywhere from six,
seven, eight, nine, ten times a day.
Those, those engagements could be,they could last minutes, or they could
last, you know, upwards, up to an hour.
It's a different beast.
When you are completely at the mercy ofthe enemy, there was nothing we could do

(00:24):
to suppress them other than shoot back.
Welcome to Combat Story.
I'm Ryan Fugit and I serve WarzoneTours as an army attack helicopter pilot
and CIA officer over a 15 year career.
I'm fascinated by the experiencesof the elite in combat.
On this show, I interview some ofthe best to understand what combat
felt like on their front lines.

(00:45):
This is Combat Story.
Today we hear a combat story fromour brothers across the pond with a
veteran and sniper from the UK's eliteparachute regiment or paras, Hugh Heyer.
Hugh deployed to Iraq twice,Afghanistan three times in addition
to Northern Ireland and the Falklands.
He survived the infamoussiege of Musa Qala.
You'll be fascinated to hear about thisexperience and it will make you appreciate

(01:08):
just how brutal fighting can be at timeswhere he and his unit were infilled into a
terrible fighting position in Afghanistan,completely surrounded by the Taliban.
He was also recognized with agallantry award for his actions
in Helmand province in 2008.
And just one of his several afghandeployments since leaving the military
He was worked as a close protectionofficer in the middle east and in the uk

(01:31):
and is the host of the h hour podcast along form conversation With guests that
include politicians actors psychologistsufc fighters authors campaigners veterans
and more I hope you enjoy this deep divefrom our close partners over in the uk
as much as I did Hugh, thanks so much fortaking the time to share your story with

(01:52):
us You Thanks for, thanks for the invite.
I'm looking, I'm excited to,uh, excited to chat with you.
Just a little joke between usright before we hit record,
you and I were just laughing.
It's way easier to be the host on these.
You and I have done many interviewsof other people and I never envy
being the person on the receiving end.
So thank you for, for jumpinginto that seat for us.

(02:12):
No problem.
No problem.
Keeps, keeps me on my toeswhen I'm interviewing as well.
Yeah.
Hey, just for people who aren't watching,you might just be listening, you know,
behind you, you've got a framed image.
I was just wondering if you could speakto what that was as we get started here.
Yeah, that's, um, that is a painting of,uh, a gentleman who's no longer with us.

(02:32):
A guy called, um, yeah, it's, uh, Brian,Brian Budd, who, um, he was killed.
He was part of the three, three power,uh, before that he was a pathfinder.
So elite, elite reconnaissanceplatoon within a 16 hour assault
brigade in the British army.
Uh, came from there to three power in 2006to come on our first tour of Afghanistan

(02:53):
in Helmand province and was, uh,unfortunately, very sadly killed during
some fight in there in Sangin province.
And, uh, but he earned a, he earneda Victoria cross in the process.
It's a, it's a painting depictinghis final moments, storming, uh,
storming a Taliban Taliban position.
Yeah.
Do you know, like how, how doyou go about getting somebody
to make something like that?
I mean, it's a, Beautifullooking rendering.

(03:15):
Yeah, it's good.
The, the unit, the unit commissioned, uh,a well known military painter over here.
There's a lot of, a lot of commissionsto, uh, to, to make the painting.
So, um, yeah, unfortunately we prefer tohave them of people who are still around,
you know, battles, which were, whichwere, um, very prominent in the history,
but every once every so often, you know,the worst happens to good people and, uh,

(03:36):
you commission one to commemorate them.
Yeah.
All right.
Look, we don't often interviewfolks from across the pond.
So can you give us all an idea kindof where do you grow up in the UK?
And, and for people who just don't knowthose areas, what's the, what's it like?
What's the, uh, that part oftown, like for all of us, UK.

(03:58):
Yeah.
So I, I'm, uh, I, um, from Wales, uh,Welsh, uh, and Wales is, you know, as a
little cut for those who, for those whothink the UK is England, UK is actually
a bunch of different countries, right?
And Wales is a small, a small country,um, on the West, the West coast of the
West coast, the West border of England.
Um, Scottish father.

(04:19):
Irish mother.
There's no English in my bloodthat I'm aware of, right?
It's pure Celt.
To me, the English, the invaders,the English came from Scandinavia.
They invaded the UK.
When it wasn't called the UK, itkicked, kicked the Celts into what is
now known as Scotland Island in Wales.
We'll never forgive them.
Um, aside from Wales, South Wales,uh, and Wales is mainly famous for its

(04:40):
diabolical weather and it's beautiful.
Mountains and beautiful countryside.
Um, so I grew up on a, on a, on a farm,um, there in South Wales, my parents
were farmers, they, uh, they rented a,they rented a house, like a 500 year
old house, a stone house, um, on anotherfarmer's on a farmer's land intended to

(05:02):
be a short term thing, like six months.
We'll stay there whilethey were trying to find.
Places nearer to where they work becausethey both moved jobs and we ended
up staying in like 10 or 11 years.
So I grew up in the countryside, youknow, the nearest neighbor was four
miles away and, uh, My parents, myyoung sister, the sheep, the cows, a
couple of horses, you know, and thenwhen I got a bit older, it was a weapon.

(05:22):
Were you working on the farm?
Like, was your parents?
No, no, no, no.
I didn't.
We were literally just sort of, uh,we, we would dwellers on the farm.
I would, um, I would go out andhelp out in the winter or in
the summer with the farmers.
We obviously we knew them because wewere renting the property for them.
Go out in the winter and, um, or in thespring and go help lambing, you know,
when the sheep were giving birth, goingto help the sheep, which had problems.

(05:45):
And summer, you know, go andget the hay in, in the winter.
I don't remember doing much in the winter.
And that's probably.
probably by choicebecause it was horrific.
It was just horrific.
You know, it'd be regularly snowed in.
That was the only bonus, not the onlybonus, it was one of the bonuses of
living there is that regularly forthe winter, we get, we get snowed
in unless you couldn't get, couldn'tget out of the house, couldn't get to

(06:06):
the, couldn't get to, Off the mountainto nevermind to get to the school.
So, um, yeah, South Wales where I grew up.
Beautiful place.
I love it.
I love it.
I live in England now.
I live like a 35 minute train ridefrom London for the center of London,
which is very, very different.
Very, very different.
Took a lot of adjustment to adjust tocity life as opposed to mountain life.

(06:27):
You know, I'm sure you get this a lot andyou're going to hate me for asking it,
but a lot of us will know Wales recentlyfrom Wrexham from the show, I don't know.
From the show?
Yeah, have you seen orheard of Welcome to Wrexham?
Ryan Reynolds buys this football club.
I haven't, but I know RyanReynolds owns the football club.
Yeah.
And I, where I grew up, I willsay this about Wrexham for you,

(06:51):
the people haven't been there.
I'm assuming that, I don'tknow what's on that show.
Does it give any insight into the town?
No.
Tons.
Tons.
Oh, it does.
I mean, it does it justice.
Like it, it shows what it'slike living in Wrexham.
I need to have a look at that then,because where I grew up in the South,
because Wrexham is in North Wales,um, and North Wales, the difference

(07:12):
between North Wales and SouthWales, they're like aliens to us.
They're weirdos.
And I think we are weirdos, you know,and, and, and sort of in the middle
of the countries, uh, The real Welshpeople who they would call themselves
who consistently speak Welsh, you know,English is a lot of their second language.
Welsh is the first language.
That was very different.
South is much more, um, acosmopolitan, a lot of better phrase.

(07:34):
Nope.
That is totally the wrong phrase, right?
For Wales, but relative to mid Wales andNorth Wales, the cities in the south.
Okay.
You know, there's,there's like a motorway.
You don't get any of that North, right?
Um, but where I grew up in SouthWales was, uh, the nearest town.
So I grew up in the, in thevalleys of Wales, inland, and

(07:55):
the nearest town outside of thevalley is a place called Neath.
Neath used to be regarded as one of themost violent nights out you could have in
Europe at one point, it was just terrible.
And, um, and that's earlynoughties, late nineties.
Now I visited Wrexham maybe fiveyears ago for the first time ever.

(08:18):
And I made Neath look like centralLondon, it's just, you know,
it is like a different level.
It's a different level.
That's like, this is, you know, theonly people I think who, who, who
love Wrexham are the people who livethere and have never leaved, never
thought or even never will leavethe whole family has lived there.
You know, people visit in, theydon't stay very long, but kudos

(08:41):
to Ryan Reynolds for buying it.
I mean, I assume thefootball team's doing well.
They're doing well.
They really, I will say forthat town, they've probably
done a heck of a lot for it.
And for, for the Americans whohave, have seen it, I'm sure
they'll know, but it is a good show.
It's, it's entertainingand it's a good exposure.
They go through someWelsh customs and whatnot.
Yeah.
They're entertaining people.

(09:01):
They're editing.
They're a bit close to the borderfor most Welsh people's liking,
but you know, there's a correctside of the border at least.
Yeah.
So, so you talked about your folks.
Um, sounds like yougrew up in a rural area.
Were your parents former military?
Like what got you into that?
no, no.
I had, I had, uh, there wasmy father was a military.

(09:22):
My mother wasn't military.
None of their siblings were military.
Like my mother is actually Irish.
So as in, yeah.
Republic of Ireland, you know, I wasinto the Republic of Ireland, which is
proper island, and you've got NorthernIreland, which is part of the UK.
And she grew up in, uh,just outside Dublin.
Um, uh, we used to go visit in thereat least twice a year when I was young.

(09:42):
And there's no IRA members.
In extended family.
Definitely, definitelyfriends of the family.
Um, it actually led to my, my joining inup process during the British Army at the
time took a lot longer for the Yeah, Ibet The vetting had to be a lot longer.
There were names that we had to leave offthe list of the family trees we put it in.
See, we don't, don't need to need totalk to, we don't mention your Aunt Cora.

(10:05):
We don't mention, youmention you Auntie Cora.
Okay.
We don't mention Auntie Cora.
I actually lost a, she lost a fewfriends when I, when I joined up as in
kind of, um, stopped speaking to her.
Uh.
But no, not military.
I think that, I think I've got agreat uncle who was military, but
you know, we're talking second worldwar and national service after that.

(10:26):
And the national servicestopped in the fifties.
Um,
so no, you know, I suppose thatleads onto what was my drive
to join if that's the case.
Yeah.
Um, it was, I, I describe it as nowunderstanding is I want, I was trying
to sort of, Who myself, myself, uh,I was the polar opposite of, of who

(10:50):
I am now, for some reason, I can't,I do try and understand it, for some
reason when I was growing up, reallylow, I had really low self esteem.
I really low self confidence, you know,I was, I was very clingy with my parents,
um, and yeah, I was, I would, you know,I would class myself as like a, Uh, sort

(11:11):
of a weak character, but I don't meanthat like negative aspects of character.
It was just no, I just wasn'ta strong person, a weak
personality, a weak personalityis a better way to describe it.
Uh, and I'm not sure that is, Ithink, I think growing up where I
grew up played a big part in it.
You know, I didn't, I didn't have, Ihad very little sort of social, uh,

(11:31):
development compared to anyone else.
No, I finished school, lifecycle home or walk home, um, and
then I'd be at home on my own.
You know, my sister was a few yearsyounger at the time and when a three
or four years younger when you're 15,that's a lifetime younger, there's
no, you know, so everyone else wouldbe out meeting their friends and.

(11:52):
Whatever socialize now at the schooland before school walk to school
with each other and stuff like that.
I'm on the weekends.
I had none of that I think thatplayed a part because my social
skills didn't develop much later.
It took a lot of work.
Um, yeah, I ended up, um, the onething that was good, I was fit, you
know, and I was, I was good at rugby,playing rugby, rugby is a huge sport
in Wales and I was, I was fit, runningfit, like from the waist down, I was

(12:16):
really fit, from the waist up, I wasjust, I was, there was nothing there,
I was just skin and bone as you wouldhave for like a middle distance runner.
I think at one point in college, soit would have been when I was about
17, I started getting aspirations tojoin the RAF, the Royal Air Force.
As I recall, the only, the only, the onlyreason I thought of that was we were doing
like a career lesson, you know, Hey, startthinking about what you might want to do.

(12:41):
This is in school the year before,start thinking about what you
might want to do when you leave.
And I, I wanted to bean engineer, I think.
Didn't know what engineer meant.
I was just like, Oh, okay.
That was cool.
They do important stuff.
Mass and trip.
And, uh, we were looking through a careerbooklet and there was something in there
that said something about a avionics oraviation engineer in the Royal Air Force.

(13:04):
And I thought, Oh, I'lljoin the Royal Air Force.
You know, it's like when you're young,it's just so flippantly, yeah, cool.
That sounds good.
I'll just do that.
But the intent was to go to collegeand, um, get A levels and then join
the RAF as an engineer, I suppose.
Didn't quite work out.
Uh, I wasn't the most academic in school.

(13:25):
I sort of, I think as my socialskills started developing and kind of
developing the phone where I becamethe, uh, you know, mess around the
Joker a little bit, it was kind ofthe only way I would get like positive
interaction because I was super ginger.
I was super skinny.
My social skills are bad.
I was just a farm boy.
You know, everyone had thelatest, coolest trainers and bag.

(13:47):
And I would just stop.
I think my, I think mydad actually given me a.
It was a very old, maybe1950s military backpack.
I think it was a German thing.
I like a canvas thing.
You know, everyone's going toschool in Nike, Nike backpacks.
I think I'm going to this German thing.
So I became like a bit of a jokerand academic went down, down
the hill, downhill a little bit.

(14:07):
I got enough to go intocollege, to get into college.
But, um, I don't know what it's likein the States, but here the difference
between school, you know, and college,uh, in terms of how the teachers,
lecturers motivate you is very different.
When you're in school at the age ofabout 16, you're pushed, you know, it's
like, Hey, you do, you do your work, doyour homework and do your coursework,

(14:29):
or you should get in detention.
You know, you're staying behind afterschool, you're getting punished.
When you go into college.
It's none of that.
It's expected to self motivate.
I had zero self motivation, youknow, I'd also discovered the pub and
I'd also discovered a certain sortof group of friends like the pub.
So we'd disappear officers who could goto the pub, you know, 16, 17 years old.
And that's how it went.

(14:50):
Um, At the same time, I was beingproductive in, in, in computing.
I was taking an A level in computing andone of the A levels and I was spending
my time in the class with a friendof mine actually is now, now in LA.
Um, we, we were, this is98, yeah, 98, late 98.
And we, we built a website.

(15:11):
Which was Dang.
Um, no, there was no, therewas no WordPress or Yeah,
you had to actually do it.
And it was code in it.
Yeah, it was East College sucks.co uk.
And we were in, we were in EastCollege and we'd done it anonymously.
We thought I was the one whowould set it all up and we
would sort of build this out.
And it was, you know, it was like,um, just, just a fun website.

(15:33):
You know, you, you, we makesome comments about it.
College and make some jokey stuff.
And we had a guest book, doremember guest books on the old
websites At a hotel or something?
Yeah.
But on the website, back in, backin the day, you'd go on a website
and to, if you wanted to interactwith us, like leave a comment.
It was in a guest bookand you have to go there.
The students started leaving,leaving comments, and they

(15:54):
weren't being very nice.
They were like being really awfulthings about some of the lecturers.
Um, but turns out we hadn't covered ourtracks very well 'cause we were brand
new to this internet stuff and they, uh.
Got hold of my IP address and I calledin and said, you need to leave, leave
the college before we kick you out.
Okay.
I'm going, I was, I was, I wasn'tgoing to get my A levels anyway.
That was, that was comingup to the second year.

(16:15):
I wasn't doing enough to get them.
Okay.
I'm leaving.
So that put the RAF idea out the window.
Um, yeah, I was so proud of that website,you know, and, uh, yeah, I feel like
you were on to something you had, youhad customers, you know, yeah, yeah.
Um, at the same time, about the sametime, there was a military recruitment

(16:40):
advertisement going on, I think on thetelevision, on TV, and it said, come
and spend 24 hours with the pirates.
And you'd, you know, you'd phone up,you, Hey, I wanna come and spend 24 hours
at the powers and see what it's like.
And so I went and did that with afriend of mine, a friend of mine.
Uh, he had managed to stay incollege, but his dad was at military

(17:03):
and he'd always wanted to join up.
So we went down together on to, to spend24 hours with the powers, and we went
down to a place called All Shots, whichis, uh, it's, it's still now regarded as
the homes of the British Army in the uk.
It's sort of a dated hometo the British army now.
It's like a largerversion of Wrexham, right?
But in England, it's horrible.
Uh, we went down there andbasically for 24 hours, we

(17:27):
got shown all the shiny stuff.
That the military have andthe pirates have them, you
got shown all the cool stuff.
We got to do some weapon handling.
We got to do some basic fitness tests.
And we did like a mile and a half runon these things and various stuff.
You know, Hey, look howcool the pirates are.
Come and join us.
None of the bad stuff, obviously.
And, uh, I was completely sold.

(17:48):
I was completely sold.
I was completely sold on it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then I went home and toldmy dad I was, uh, I told my
dad I was going to join up.
At this point, he didn't knowI dropped out of college.
So I told him, I told himboth things at the same time.
Same time.
Yeah, yeah.
I, it was a, it was a dad.
I've left college, but you know, uh,he said, he said, yeah, I thought, I

(18:10):
think I kind of guessed that becauseyou haven't been for like six weeks.
I said, but I really needyou to help train me because
I want to join the pirates.
You know, I was appealing to his pride.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'll train you.
I'll train you, Shug.
It's like Scottish people say Shugis, uh, it's like slang for Hugh.

(18:30):
I don't know.
I don't know why he'sanswering you should.
Yeah.
So I got away with getting an absolutebollocking off him for leaving college.
Cause he, he was, uh, well, he was,um, impressed at the idea of, uh,
me trying to join the powers at thetime of which I didn't know much.
He must've known more than II gotta say that sounds like a
pretty brilliant recruiting scheme.
But when you were in the Paris, didyou end up having to do one of those?

(18:52):
Like where you had, cause I got to imagineif you're in the Paris, you're like, Oh
my God, we got these people off the streetcoming in and they're going to get weapons
and we got to deal with them for 24 hours.
No, we, I didn't do that.
Uh, so we have, we have obviouslyrecruiting team, the recruiting
office has changed a bit now, but
the recruiting team is notsomewhere you want to go, really.

(19:15):
It's.
You'd either go there if you are, iffor some reason your progress is being
stunted or slowed for some reason,injury, ability, you know, um, or
for other reasons, like you, you, forcompassionate reasons, you know, you, you
can't afford, you can't be away a lot.

(19:35):
The recruiting teams are quite, theycan be, depending on where you're
based, can be quite steady, you know.
good home life sometimes other time notso no I didn't I didn't go into that I'm
glad as well I'm glad as well like youknow, um, because at the time I joined I
joined in 2000 and um, it was It was in a,a real quiet time for us in, in the uk, in

(19:58):
the, the West as well, I think, you know.
Yeah.
Cold War sort of had come to an end GulfWar one had happened in 19 9, 19 99.
91, 1.
Yeah.
Uh, nine one, sorry.
And, um, we had bits of Bobs in theUK had been involved with Kosovo.
Bosnia, not the same stuff the USis involved with, but nothing major.
And it was all getting a bit stagnant.

(20:18):
I joined in 2000, obviously we knowup 2001 and then the rest just.
Madness for the us audience.
Give us a rundown of the Paris.
Like I think for those in the militarycommunity We've got a pretty good idea
But for people listening who maybe aren'tas familiar How do how should an american
audience associate them with kind ofus forces if there's a good analogy?

(20:39):
Yeah, I think well we reducedI think Previously we'd say
an airborne unit, right?
But I think an airborne unit I thinkcertainly in the us has lost the
meaning to me an airborne unit isour troopers Yeah, I think You I
think over in the U S now everyoneis classes, everyone assault as well.
Why are not, not exclusively paratroopers?
Yeah.
I mean, we've got the 82nd kind ofparatroopers, 101st would be more

(21:02):
like air assault, but I feel like thepairs are even a little more advanced,
almost like Rangers to some degree.
Yeah, correct.
Oh yeah.
I say, I say that's more accurate.
Yeah.
So the, the paras are the, the, theairborne infantry of the British army.
Um, and they're the.
Uh, we, I was, I can say,it's the only infantry unit.

(21:22):
In fact, it's the only unit in the Britisharmy barring special forces and the
pathfinders who have a selection process.
So, you know, we were formed in,uh, well, 1940 was the order came
through to form the unit, but it was.
Designated as a shock troops.
Everything we know, what paratroopersare used for a great for now is

(21:43):
shock troops behind enemy lines.
And, and so Churchill had seen Germans andthe Russian, well, the Russians had sort
of developed, developed the methodology.
The Germans had first doneit operationally jumped.
And then he went, no, this is.
bit mental.
We're losing too many troops.
So we need to rethink this.
And Churchill went, sounds great.

(22:04):
I'll have a bit of that.
So, and formed, and formed whatbecame the parachute regiment.
Um, and so, yeah, so now what we areis, uh, what we are today, a relatively
short history from the forties, butso you're a pretty illustrious one.
Yeah.
And the less.
Yeah, that's the thing in the UK.
We have, we have units whoare just hundreds of years
old, hundreds of years old.
It's wild.

(22:25):
You see the customs and things you seeand, and, and the parachute regiment
does get those old, old and bold units.
They do like to say, well,I've been around very long.
You've got very little history, butyou know, there's advantages to that.
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Thanks again for listening to thisspecial edition of Combat Story.
There's lots of careers in uniforms andceremonies and stuff we don't have to do.
They do.
But, um, yeah, that's who we are today.

(24:12):
Very much the same today.
We, we have four, we have fourbattalions and a battalion.
So regular battalions aroundabout 600 strong, fully manned.
Um, with some attachments on aswell as bolstered numbers on top
of that of the 600, almost allof those will be paratroopers.
And the main three regular battalionsare one, two, and three power.

(24:32):
One power recently, relatively,relatively recently, they became, they
went in a form part of the specialforces support group, which is, uh,
which is a unit, um, combined ofparachute regiment marines and some RAF
regiment, uh, but the core of it is.
One paradise parachute regiment, uh,who support SAS, SBS on operations,

(24:53):
um, on two and three power, uh,the other units and, and the, the
guys rotate basically between, wetry and we try and rotate between.
Yeah.
So that's who we are today.
Um, a very, uh, very capable regiment.
Um, but I think like, I think withany unit of that ilk, any unit

(25:18):
selection of which is perceived to be.
elite, which is an elite unit.
You know, it comes with its, uh,comes with its problems, like people's
perception of, uh, perception ofall that, and all the rest of it.
And, uh, uh, but in general,you know, it's, uh, it is a

(25:38):
very formidable unit, I think.
And, and we pride ourselveson, on that selection process.
The individual who, who, um, kind ofasked me, Suggested that I reach out to
you Said he had served with you and hesaid that I needed to ask you about your
selection That you were singled out.
I think by a corporal duringthe selection process.

(25:59):
Does this ring a bell or no?
Oh, I think you may be referring toum If you're talking, yeah, I think
when I was in the second phase of mytraining, so we, our trainers split
down into, this is generally forBritish soldiers, it's split down into
either two or three phases to phaseone, everyone does phase one, everyone.

(26:23):
If you join the British army,phase one is the real basics, how
to be a soldier, the real basics.
Fire a weapon, pass your basic weaponhandling test, learn basic tactics, you
know, learn drill, learn how to dress youruniform, learn your, your field skills and
military knowledge and all the rest of it.
Yeah.
Phase two is in yourmore specified training.
Phase two for us, general is moreinfantry stuff, more advanced, you know,

(26:49):
different kinds of ambushes, differentkinds of, um, patrols and OPs and all,
all, all, all, all, all of those things.
Um, and then phase threeof people do it is for.
That's for what we would call,um, uh, you signalers, things that
are highly technical and they justneed more time in school to try

(27:11):
and learn it, to kind of learn it.
Um, my, my phase two of my phase one wereactually taught by different instructors.
So the parachute regimen.
Throughout all of the training,we only get taught by other paras.
That's mainly the case foreveryone who joins the paras.
They've been taught by other paras.
Other units are not the same.
Other units, if you're, uh, if you'regoing to join, I don't know, for example,

(27:32):
the Welsh Guards or the Royal Irish,your training staff, when you train
them, they could be from any unit.
With us, it's different.
We only, paras train paras.
And when I moved into phase two, Um, Ithink this is what he's referring to.
I've alluded to it a couple of times.
We were actually talking aboutviolence and corporal punishment,
should we say, um, on the place of it.

(27:53):
My phase two, I had a particularlyviolent, uh, instructor, um, when I was
in phase two, I mean, particularly didn'tlike me because you're Welsh or what?
No, probably played a part in it.
Oh, he never mentioned it.
He was English, but no, I think, Ithink you smell a bit of weakness.

(28:13):
You know, I was.
I mentioned to you what I was like beforeI joined and that doesn't, that doesn't
just suddenly disappear on a joint.
I was trying to build myself up and, um,and training a training environment in
the military, regardless of which one,whichever you're joining, particularly
infantry is designed to break it down.
Right.
There wasn't a lot left to break down onme, you know, uh, and, um, I think through

(28:37):
nervousness or, you know, weak mindedness,I just sometimes it wasn't up to scratch,
you know, I've made basic mistakes.
That could be leaving, leaving, you're notputting enough of the stocks in my burger.
Yeah.
Hey, make sure your kids got fivepairs of socks, two pairs of whatever.
And if it was one down, well, you'regoing to get punished for that.
If you make enough mistakes andyou'll get punished, punished more.

(29:01):
He was not afraid of punishing you withhis fists, you know, and he would do it.
And the more, yeah, the moremistakes I made, the faster
that kind of punishment comes.
The short of shoes now
are not totally againstthat kind of punishment.
I am today partlybecause I don't think so.

(29:25):
I think you're going tobe handled a bit better.
Yeah, it is what it is.
It was, it was aparticularly difficult time.
Did not enjoy it.
Did not enjoy it.
I mean, you're not meant to enjoy it.
But, uh, my phase one waspretty relaxed to be honest.
The phase one for me was pretty relaxed.
A combination because it is easier.
You know, you're turningcivilians into soldiers.
You're not turning soldiers intoinfantrymen or paratroopers.
You're turning civilians intosoldiers and the training staff

(29:48):
I had then, which was different.
They were pretty relaxed.
It almost painted like a false pictureof what the second phase would be like.
And the second phase not only wasdifferent staff, it was a different place.
We went from a location calledLitchfield in near Birmingham, like
the West Midlands in England, not toohilly, not too, the weather's not bad.

(30:11):
Phase two was further up North inEngland and the further North you
go in England, the worse the weathergets till you get to, you know, like
Middle Earth, which is Scotland.
And then the training staff changed andthey were just ruthless, just ruthless.
I mean, you know, you can, you canbe in the same training establishment
One group of instructors canbe totally one sort of culture.

(30:34):
You go next door to the next barracksor, you know, accommodation, whatever,
then those instructors could benight and day different to them.
Yeah.
No, no, they produce totallydifferent results if they're handling
the wrongs, if they're matchedup wrong with the wrong recruits.
Yeah.
So, and I know, I mean, you, youdeploy a lot in your career and you
mentioned, you know, this is 99, 2000.

(30:56):
Obviously, 9 11 happens not long afterthat, but I think from, from what I had
seen, you do a few rotations to NorthernIreland, which you had alluded to earlier.
Yeah, the first place Iwent was Northern Ireland.
Yeah.
So, um, and that surprisedme when I think about that.
Now we think of, we think ofterrorism these days as being this.

(31:21):
Are far away, not far away.
It comes from far away.
Yeah.
There's people with different color skinto ours is speak different languages.
They look differently dressed,different, different culture.
And, you know, in my lifetime, andin fact, cause I was involved in
it operationally, you know, we, weliterally had it on, on home soil.
Um, yeah, on home soil.
So I deployed Northern Ireland in two.

(31:43):
That was the first tour endof 2001, very late 2001.
It was, it was Christmas.
Um, and there wasn't a lot going onand, um, the good Friday agreement
had been signed years before.
Uh, you know, so it was also a windingdown of British troops in Northern
Ireland, but it was still active.
But there were certain areas there whereour intelligence services would use it as

(32:03):
a training ground now for new operatives,but, um, we still have a presence
there, but not a lot was going on.
Um, I don't know.
It was a pretty bleak.
I'm not a big fan ofNorthern Ireland in general.
But what about your family history?
Like, as you kind of describedfamily in Republic of Ireland,

(32:24):
you're in Northern Ireland.
Like, was there any, Idon't know, challenge?
I don't know.
I know at least oneperson close to my mother.
We completely cut it off when, when,uh, when they found out that her son
had joined the British army, nevermindthe pirates, the pirates got a real
bad name in Ireland, real bad name.
Um, not, not popular at all, at all.

(32:47):
Like the most hated unit out there,maybe with the exception of 40 men
or debt, what it was called, which isour intelligence service over there.
Um, And that's because there was a,there's a, uh, a relatively famous
incident in, in the seventies where, um,

(33:09):
the, there were 13 civilians alleged,uh, so alleged, alleged civilians killed
by, by parachute regiment soldiers,uh, in what became a heated riot.
And it was alleged to have been shotsfired and then all hell broke loose
and 30 civilians dead at the end of it.
And the parachute regiment was theunit on the, on the ground at the day
it was caused uproar for a long time.
You know, there was inquiriesgone on into the, into.

(33:30):
late 90s, early noughties about it.
Um, and
yeah, so, as I said, at leastone person for some other desert.
I actually ended up having, having,there was a, there was a couple of
brothers I grew up with because asI said, I used to go visit over in
Ireland and we'd have family andfriends go over and visit us in Wales.

(33:54):
And there was a couple of brotherswho would come over about my age.
And, uh, one of them went on toproduce a brilliant TV film and he
went on to produce a very damningdocu film about Bloody Sunday.
That was in the noughties, maybe 04, 05or something like that, you know, and that
kind of, uh, made it even worse, but inthe tour itself, and Ireland, like I said

(34:20):
at the time, it wasn't the nicest placeto go and, and, and, uh, do anything,
you know, patrol, do anything at all.
And it was, it was also strangebecause like I said, these people are
the white British, although they lookwhite British, you know, some of them
would not call themselves British.
Um, you know, white British, it looks thesame as, as towns and cities in the UK.

(34:44):
It was a very odd place to be.
I actually, when I went out there twice,I went back out in 2004 after, after the
Iraq, the invasion of Iraq, went back outin 2004 for what's called marching season.
So it's obviously a veryreligious, religiously
orientated country as is Ireland.
You know, the Irish arejust very, as is Scotland.

(35:05):
Um, and in the summer there's a, there'slike a six week period where they
have what's called marching season.
And it's where the religious communitiesgo out and they do these formal.
for marches, you know, religiousmarches and ceremonies and
processions through streets and stuff.
And they have these, they have routes thatthey've always traditionally historically

(35:26):
gone and marched these routes.
And, and over time the routes becomedivided, you know, in terms of
sectarianism, they get divided and allof a sudden a route that, you know,
two years ago was almost entirely, or10 years ago was entirely Protestant.
You know, five years later,maybe it could be Protestant
Catholic, Protestant Catholic.
And the Catholics may notwant some processions coming

(35:48):
through that are nothing to dowith Catholics or vice versa.
And so we went back out for marchingseason 04 and uh, it was pretty tasty.
It was pretty tasty.
I've got a friend do, and he.
he got snatched into the crowd.
Um, he got snatched out of the line intothe crowd and he's a, he's a small lad.
He's like, there's a boxer.

(36:08):
He's like 70 kilos.
There's nothing to him.
What's that?
Like 150 pounds, 160 pounds.
I mean, he's a formidable man.
I wouldn't want to fight the guy.
Right.
Cause I know he can box, but youjust got grabbed out young, young, a
young private to grab at the crowd.
And, um, There was a, there was a platoonsergeant that ended up going, you know,
he was disappearing in the crowd becausehe was going to get lynched or lynched at

(36:30):
worst or, you know, just, just absolutelybattered and ended up in hospital.
And they managed to rescue him backout, you know, and, uh, and they,
they, in that riot, it was completelyunderestimated in terms of strength
and the aggression of, and the angerof those, of what was a protest.
Turned into a riot and the, the, itwas a company of guys, like a 90, a

(36:51):
hundred paratroopers got completely,well, almost completely overrun.
They got into the backof the armored vehicles.
I got another friend who was,um, he was fighting off a
guy with a guy with a hammer.
And he was in, he was a driver.
My friend was a driver.
The guy coming at him insidewith a hammer, you know,
they'd rip the doors off.
That was 2004.
Yeah.
Yeah, not that long ago.
It's on home soil.

(37:11):
It's, uh, it's crazy when you thinkabout it, crazy when you think about
it, because at the same time wewere starting to find like the, you
know, the overseas terrorist threat.
We were still dealingwith it at home, you know.
And you mentioned, I mean, youdo, so you do Northern Ireland.
I think you do a stint maybein the Falklands, you do
Iraq, you do Afghanistan.
Where's the first time you find yourself?

(37:33):
in a firefight?
Firefight would have beenAfghanistan during the six.
Um, but first, my first, first timebeing shot at, if you want to say
that was artillery and the invasion ofIraq was artillery incoming from, from
the Iraqis, in the Rwanda oil fields,just in the South, just near Basra.

(37:55):
You probably, you probably know ofthat area, um, and we were, we'd
moved across the border from Kuwaitin, yeah, we were doing the invasion.
We were going in on vehicles,though we didn't jump in.
We went in on vehicles and we wereslowly moving through the oil fields
up the central, up the central road.
I can't remember the name of the routethat is, but it's irrelevant anyway.

(38:17):
But, um, as we were moving up ona day by day basis, we'd go firm,
we'd dig shells, we'd dig trenches.
I thought I'd rephrase that.
We did shellscripts or we'd occupytrenches, which had been there from like
the Iran Iraq war and things like that.
But then as we got further north intothe, into the oil field up near Al Qurnah,
which is further north, north of the oilfield, I should say, not north of Iraq.

(38:40):
We started getting artilleryfire on a fairly regular basis.
I think over, I think over two orthree days, it was fairly regular.
But, um, I mentioned, you know,I mentioned earlier, in, in this,
in this interview that there'dbeen a lot of, you know, in, in
operations, kinetic operations forBritish military up to that point.

(39:01):
Like, I remember being that, Iremember hearing about someone in
Tupara at the time, and we'd heard,oh, there's a member that there's
that team, there's that section ofguys, and they were in a contact in,
Wherever it was, Macedonia, wherethe fuck it was like, oh my God, wow.
It was a big deal.
Somebody shot and they shot it back.
You go, holy shit.
Wish that.

(39:21):
And you think, wow, it'd be amazing.
Wish we could do that.
And then you fast forward to like Iraqand you get an artillery and you're
not really thinking anything of it.
You know, when everyone's going throughit and everyone's doing, experiencing
the same thing as a group at the sametime, kind of immediately normalizes it
and no one's freaking out, which goes,it kind of immediately normalizes it.
Um, but the thing about thatwas that we were so wet behind
the ears that there was a.

(39:43):
there was a motorbike that wouldcome down the central road.
Um, I've never seen it the first time.
You could see it way off.
There's two guys in the motorway.
There's Iraqis too.
And it turns out it wasIraqi artillery officers.
Or we're assuming almost an officer.
And they would come down on the motorbike.
They'd get in the buy homes.
They'd be like, okay, look at this.
And they'd get back on the motorbike.
They go, Roar!

(40:04):
And then, I don't know, half an hour, anhour later, whenever they got back into
the position, the artillery were coming.
They were very good shots.
No one got hit.
What the fuck?
And, uh, we ended up putting an ambush in.
Um, I went out in the first ambush.
We didn't get that.
We didn't, they didn't turn up.
We went out through the night,uh, to where we thought they
were going on the motorbike.
They didn't turn up that morning.

(40:25):
We, we, we, uh, we withdrewback to the positions.
Then the other platoon went out thefollowing night and the court, court
with Dawn rastam up and there wasno, no artillery, but was the first
contact was incoming artillery.
Our tour three Paris tour.
There was super quiet, super quiet.
It's just, we ended up being inplaces where either the enemy

(40:45):
had already withdrawn or there'dbe no enemy in the first place.
Yeah.
Um, like intelligence, I mean, incorrect.
Or we had overestimated how much, howmuch resistance therapy super quiet,
even when we went and took Basra, youknow, we, we thought that right near
the end, we thought that we're goingto be a big, a very big, but in Bosnia

(41:06):
on zero zero, there's some littlebit of fighting on the outskirts of
the units, but for us, it was zero.
It was pretty much, it was prettyunderwhelming to be honest.
I remember getting told we were going.
I was kind of excited.
I think going to Iraq.
I think, yeah, going to war.
Amazing.
Yep.
Going to do it.
And, uh, and yeah, going to war.
Amazing.
But I think It was partly naivety,but I think it was also partly,

(41:29):
I probably realized at thatpoint that nothing had gone on.
Nothing was going on.
It was super boring.
We'd done Northern Ireland,done, gone to the Falklands, the
Falklands isn't even really at war.
I mean, it couldn't be an operationuntil they really wanted to make it.
We were doing, we were doing defensivestuff there, legitimately so, because
there'd been some Argentine, um,shenanigans on the coast of the West

(41:50):
Falkland Isles the year before, two yearsbefore, but nothing else had gone on.
So it's like, holy shit.
I mean, I'll for real.
Quiet.
Obviously I, I didn't,yeah, that didn't happen.
No, I didn't.
Yeah.
I mean, the, the, uh, once the war phasefinished, we went into We went into, um,

(42:11):
like a reconciliation, not reconciliation,uh, consolidation phase, you know,
afterwards, and we ended up patrollingthe Iranian border, uh, trying to stop
weapons and money smuggling coming inover the border, which is quite fun.
It's like wacky races, you know,you're a soft skin, Scotland's
vehicle is tooled up and, uh,and, uh, within, you know, within.

(42:33):
Within small absences of theIranian border and the Iranian
watchtowers, it was always this.
How close should we get?
Yeah, that was, that was good fun.
When do you go through sniper training?
Oh, the year after.
Yeah.
That was the year after.
So after Iraq, but before Afghanistan?
After Iraq, before Afghanistan.
Yeah.
Okay.
I think that was, I think that's whenthings changed a little bit for me, uh,

(42:54):
in terms of mentality, you know, um,and those character traits I mentioned
earlier, you know, the character flaws.
I should say I mentioned earlier,you know, um, during sniper
training, you kind of lost that.
No, I think the Iraq tourstarted changing things.
Um, I, you know, once you've experienced.

(43:16):
You know, being on the, being on the wrongend experience being in a two way range,
you know, be shot at being artillery,whatever it may be, and you perceive
yourself to have performed adequately.
You haven't panicked, you haven'tfrozen, you haven't fled, you've
done exactly what you need to do.
Or whatever rank or whatever jobyou're doing, you know, it's just,

(43:38):
that's everyone, everyone, that'severyone's aspiration, right?
They don't wanna be a, a flapper of whatwe would call it in the uk, you a flapper.
And, um, and no one ev andno one ever knows until they
actually are in that situation.
And I mean, Iraq, I sortof prove that to myself.
Okay?
I don't panic no.
Right away.
I'm pretty calm and composed.
I can, I can do what needs to be done.

(44:02):
And then, um, to, uh, then, so the otherback of that tour, I got put forward
for promotion when I did a promotionalcourse, learn, learn the stuff, you
know, from the tactics to the leadership,to the drill and all the rest of it.
And I'd kill a man's corporate after that,which was relatively, relatively, I was

(44:25):
actually not that relatively quick, Isuppose, a little bit quicker than usual.
Well, that's two years.
It was after two years that happened.
Yeah, it was pretty quick.
Um, and then oh four was island.
And then I had a friend go across, he'dbeen invited to three power sniper platoon

(44:45):
the year before he'd been in, he'd been inthree power a little bit longer than me.
And the way it worked back then was,you know, you could sort of say, Oh,
I'd love to go to, I'd love to bea sniper and go to sniper platoon.
You'd have to be invited.
You'd have to be invited across.
And that was on the provision that youpassed the course in the first place.
And the course is eight, eightweeks, nine weeks, maybe eight weeks.

(45:07):
Um, so I got invited across in oh four.
So did the island tour came back fromthat went on a slight because I think that
was October, November, December, I thinkit was eight weeks over that over those
three months across those three months.
And, um, you operatewith a lot more autonomy.
Obviously, you operate a lot more,you have to be a lot, have a lot more
reliance on your own decision making.

(45:28):
You're making a lot of the decisionsyourself, tactically, as opposed
to It's supposed to be directed.
Yeah.
So I performed well on the, on thesniper course and then came back and
joined the platoon, the sniper platoon,which at the time was 23 strong.
Wow.
Yeah.
23 snipers, maybe.
Yeah.
Um, so, so big, but not small.
I said, you know, it wasabout right for the unit.
There was, there was other snipersin three para, but they weren't

(45:51):
part of the platoon, so they wouldbe in rifle companies or these
guys who they would have maybe.
done the sniper course because it hadthe opportunity to or they've previously
been part of the sniper platoon and theymoved out of that to go and that's part
of the emotions and things um and theway three power works is and two power
and i think most of the other unitsprobably work is it's a platoon of snipers

(46:15):
but in in reality on operations on amission we we basically get loaned out
to different units, or we go and operateby ourselves or in pairs or in teams.
But normally we'll get loaned out to therifle companies, the rifle platoons or
sections to bolster their capabilitieson whatever mission they're going on.
Um, and that's how we, that's how we work.

(46:36):
So that was 04.
You go in in 06, right?
So you got a couple of yearsbefore you get into Afghanistan.
Afghanistan was 06, yeah.
The first Afghanistan was 06, yeah.
So I went, after 04, I wentto Iraq in 2005, back to Iraq.
We've done the Iraq invasion.
Back to Iraq in 05, thesame area, like Basra.
Bazaar area.
We were operating out of, uh,operating out of Shriver log

(46:57):
base and, um, actually quite fun.
I say quite fun.
We, we were given a bitof free reign in that.
I think the, I think the capabilityof Snipers was being re realized.
And the reason I say that is because up tothat point, probably up to the 0203 point.

(47:19):
And again, it's down to thatlull in like operational tempo.
You kind of get the advantages anddisadvantages and capabilities of
different units, different, differenttypes of soldier, different specialisms.
And you just, it's almost likeyou're back to the default.
It's just, you just, Going through themotions of existing as a fighting force,

(47:40):
whereas when more operations and thetempo kicks up, you start realizing,
Hey, yeah, we need to pick this upbecause people get killed otherwise,
you know, don't do anything very well.
Yeah.
And so, you know, five, my teamgot, uh, let me think about this.
No five.
I, in fact, I know if I go inanother promotion course, yeah, I

(48:01):
got, I got promoted again, you know,five just before the Iraq tour.
So I got promoted up immediately.
I got a distinction on the course,which means you get promoted
immediately as opposed to waituntil the next like promotion.
So I went to Iraq as a, what we wouldcall a full school of corporal, um,
with my own team, but we got, we gotloaned, we got put into rifle companies,
the rifle companies are short guys.
So we went out thereoperating as rifle companies.

(48:22):
I was a section commander Therifle company, but We would
go and do reconnaissance.
So I was able to take my snipers anddo like reconnaissance missions, um, in
different areas for different reasons,spotting smugglers and unusual activity
and things like in, in suspect areas.
And so that was quite fun.
We weren't just having to do thestandard rifle company stuff.

(48:45):
We're actually able to deploy thesniper skills, which is good as well.
I don't want to be a sniperfor like less than a year.
It was really good, especiallywhen you do mates for sure.
Yeah.
And, uh, it's just, and when you trustpeople like that and you get to work, you
get to do things a little bit differentand pretty cool, you know, it's okay.
I'm enjoying it.
I'm enjoying myself now.
I'm enjoying myself now.
So, um, yeah, that was our fight.

(49:06):
Can you take us to maybethat first firefight?
I assume, I don't know if that's it.
I assume it's sometime in 06 becauseyou got the siege that you go through.
But what's your first firefight?
Like that, the two way range whereyou're sending something back.
The first firefight I wasin, we had been tasked.
So we were, we were basedout of Camp Bastion, right?
And this is relatively, I think it'sprobably about six weeks or maybe eight

(49:30):
weeks into Operation Herrick 4 forus, which was like our first biting
mission to Helmand province for theBritish forces of which the battle
group was three power battle group.
So three power was the Theyfight for us and only ask that's
on top as part of 16 hours.
So we're good.

(49:51):
And maybe eight weeks in six weeksin things to start picking up.
The first contact that happened toother guys, other guys have been in it.
And there's some of my matesand obviously the MV kicks in.
And the first one I was involved in, we,we got tasked to go out to a town called
now's that most of the civilians left.

(50:12):
There was a little police, like, outposton the outskirts of the town, you know,
probably, I don't know, 400 meters awayfrom the nearest walls of the town.
It was on a little mound of, a littledirt mound, which is maybe 10 meters high,
uh, with some, very crude rudimentarytrenches, rudimentary trenches around it.

(50:33):
Uh, and then on top of it was a, astandard wooden shack, which doubled
as this like a century tower forthe police and the Taliban had.
They were in there, the police couldn'tget in there, they'd been booted out or
killed, um, there was no one in there.
And we got tasked to goout and support the police.
Uh, we got dropped off ina, in a couple of Chinooks.

(50:55):
There wasn't many of us, it was, therewas mice, there was myself and one of
the mice, like the buddy, it's a guycalled, uh, uh, Jared, Jared Cleary.
Um, we were working in pairs for this.
There was a rifle sectionor maybe two sections.
So that section is eight guys.
So maybe 16 of them.
Um, there was, we had an antitank platoon with us as well, or

(51:16):
an anti tank section with us, Ishould say, uh, with the javelin.
Which is relatively new because youknow, the javelin weapon system.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Awesome bit of kit.
Awesome bit of kit.
I've heard, I've heard peoplesay when they use it, it works.
Yeah.
Doesn't work.
Doesn't work.
Yeah.
And, uh, yeah, so we gotdeployed to the hill basically.
And, and it was just togo on both STEM initially.
Now the Taliban at that point, theywere in as much as we were feeling

(51:41):
out what the layer, the land waslike and where they were at and what
their appetite for scrapping was.
Because they asked me at the time, it was.
we didn't think it was going to growcrazy kinetic as it did in general.
Um, they were at the same time feelingless out and they ended up, they ended
up engaging us, um, from a way off.
And there was maybe five or sixdifferent firing points, small ops.

(52:03):
And I remember the first time I rememberthe first shots coming in and I, I
reckon most people must experience this.
And it's when you You know, you hear thecracking sound over your head, you know,
the first round goes over your head.
And the first time you hear it kindof go, you look up at the sky and
you go, was that what I think it was?

(52:24):
And that lasts for a splitsecond to the other rounds.
And you go, shit.
Yeah.
And you hit the deck.
He shit.
Yeah.
And he realized you get shot at.
So yeah, that was, thatwas the case for everyone.
And because of the layers of landthere, the first, the first problem
was trying to spot where they were,trying to find where they were, and
these guys weren't hiding very well.
There was a two guys on literally ontop of a roof and the roof had no walls.
It was just wide out,wide out in the open.

(52:45):
Later in that contact, they would get,Taken out by a javelin on a top attack.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Excellent piece of gas.
I thought I saw ajavelin fight in Hungary.
So I did well.
Um, and there was two or three firingpositions off further into the town.
It was quite, it was quite hectic.
You had relatively accurate firecoming in from probably five or

(53:07):
six different positions, maybeeight or nine or 10 fighters.
I would say estimate moving around.
And we had all of us as You know,shooting back was quite loud.
Myself and Jared did what, you know,snipers are meant to do, really.
We, we, we try and identify the difficulttargets to take out and Stu zoned in on

(53:28):
a, he was a, a lone fighter and he was Hewas going up on top, on top of the roof.
There was a little, there waslike a two foot high wall in the
roof that he was hiding behind.
He was firing shots over the top,but he weren't very, very good shots.
He was just kind of spraying,you know, it's just not great.
And, uh, and then he was like, duckdown, you can back up, duck down, he'd

(53:48):
come back up and, uh, Stu was, Stu wasshooting and I was, I was spotting.
I don't know how it works inthe U S actually, but over here,
if we work in a purse, then.
The more experienced sniper wouldgenerally, or the higher ranking sniper,
literally in terms of rank, you know,war rank, will spot and the least

(54:09):
experienced or the lesser rank will shoot.
I don't know if thatworks the same way there.
Now in this, in this instance, Stu wasthe more experienced, but I outranked him.
So he was on the, he was on thebolt action, which I didn't like.
I wanted to be on the bolt action.
I didn't want to be spotted, but, um, heended up, uh, he ended up taking it on.
And, um, his first shot actually.
Missed the guy over thetop of the, of the wall.

(54:32):
And the first shot was like six inchesto know, like, I don't know why a three,
three, a car around hit a mud wall, right?
You know, six inchesbelow this guy's face.
It caused him a big fright, dashedoff, dashed off the roof and went
down to the side of the building wherehe thought he couldn't be seen, but
where he was hiding was like a net.
And, uh, and a little, in a littlerat run, you could, you could

(54:54):
see him so you could see him asyou ended up taking him home.
And, uh, I think that was students first,actually, I think that was to you first.
What was that like for you?
I know you, I mean,you're spotting, right?
You're maybe you're not the one pullingthe trigger the first time, but like
you're zeroing in on an individualfor the first time, presumably.
And taking a life, any, like, isanything running through your mind?

(55:18):
Or is it just like, this is whatwe got to do all the way back?
It doesn't, no.
I've been asked this before,but it's kind of thing.
I know Stu has as well.
Um, or it doesn't run through your mind.
I think, I think there'sno question in it, right?
Because you're going throughwhat you train to do.
Yeah.
Right.
And that includes, ohyeah, kill the bad guys.
But it also includes a approach,a logical process of, should

(55:41):
this individual be killed?
Yeah.
You know, should they be shot?
And, uh, so when you come to the pointof Well, at the point of identifying
a target, they wouldn't be a targetif they weren't legitimate, you
know, so you get to the point ofpulling the trigger or, like I said,
identifying the target, then there'sno, there's no question to be asked.
Now, I think, um, you know, I think maybethe people who will see those things

(56:04):
like that are either killed someone theyshouldn't have killed or question the
morality of, in general, of what they'redoing and where they're going to be there.
So the answer, I know it's aboring answer, but I didn't,
didn't think anything about it.
And I thought about that in the past, youknow, cause it's not the only instance
and, and, um, I'm glad I feel like that.
I wouldn't want to have regrets.
Yeah, because I would then be questioningthe morality of my decisions at the time.

(56:29):
You know, I, I, I, you know, youasked me now what I think about those
operations and allow a role, Britishrole or Western role in those things,
Iraq, Afghanistan in general, andmay give you an answer, you know,
people may not be happy about hearing.
What does that mean?
I will go and change anythingI did or regret anything I did.
It does not.
It does not.

(56:49):
You act in the, in the, youact on the information and
what you believe at a time.
That's a fight.
I mean, in this instance, you know,Um, that contact came to an end
when the javelin hit the guy on theroof, that kind of was a, that was
kind of the end of it, like done,like, okay, what the hell is that?
I just fired it.
So let's stop this because they maynot, those guys may not have not seen

(57:11):
as in the Taliban may not have seenthat weapon system before as soon as
the level came, the firing stoppedand the level kind of lasted more
than sort of 10, 15 seconds and werealized, okay, it's not a lot less.
We broke the contact at the start.
Everyone started laughing.
Everyone on the hill started laughing.
Like it was like an elation.
It was like an adrenaline dump, laughter.
Even the boss was laughing.

(57:31):
Um, you could hear it all around.
And that was the onlytime I ever heard that.
As in everyone doing it.
Yeah.
You know, of all the contacts I haddown the line, and the engagements I
had down the line throughout that tourand others, you get some chuckles.
I had some chuckles after some prettyhairy times, but not everyone together.
And I think that was because atthat point, relatively on the tour,

(57:51):
early on the tour, everyone hadjust been the first on Firefly.
It was relatively straightforward.
We'd come out of it unscathed.
And felt pretty good about it, I think.
And realized, holy shit, we'vejust done one of those things we
thought we'd never do in our career.
Yeah.
And there were many more to come.
So you come out of that, kind of yourfirst euphoric almost firefight, and

(58:13):
then there's this later on, I don'tknow how much later, this siege.
I've not talked to somebodywho's been through this.
Oh, you're not aware of the siege?
But no, I like, I've never interviewedsomebody who's been a part of it.
And so I'm curious, like, could youwalk us through what this thing?
It's an unusual one to say the least.
And I, I, I kind of try and work outwhat should I really think of this?
Cause for a long time, I was, itwas like proud of my part there.

(58:38):
It was like, it was like a pridein, I was in something that was
crazy, hostile, belonged, unique,horrific, you know, all those things.
I was proud of.
I've have an experience.
Right.
And I think in a strange way,because I think that is, it's
like a feather in your cap, right?

(58:59):
Yeah.
Hey, cause everyone wasin tough stuff out there.
Uh, and, uh, I think that for mewas the toughest, the toughest, the
toughest time I've ever experienced.
Wow.
And this is better Calais, right?
I mean, I'm pronouncing it correctlyfor people who are Muscala.
So I'm going to try andremember the build up to this.
So, you know, on that Oh sixtour, very Frantic, uh, yeah,

(59:23):
frantic iss the right word.
We had occupied different, we'd gone, youknow, taken hold of different locations.
S sangin now at s uh, sang now a Reh,Kajaki . But a few, and, and in those
areas there wasn't just one base.
It was often multiples of, um, andTaliban as early on the tour had gotten

(59:49):
very connect with this, and it was.
Consistent in depending on whicharea you're in, it was, you know,
you, you were in contact every day.
If you're in Sangin, for example,you go out and patrol out, out the
gate, you get across the open groundand you get into the green area and
you know, you were guaranteed to getbumped, guaranteed to get ambushed.
Um, there was a question of how well youresponded to it and you could get ambushed

(01:00:11):
on the way out, get ambushed on the wayin, you know, then you could, but you
could go out and do an offensive action.
So you're talking two or threetimes maybe out in the ground.
or more.
Uh, and that was pretty muchthe same for all of the places.
Sangin was one of the worst andMusakalo was actually a place
we hadn't intended to go into.
Musakalo is a town further northof Sangin Valley, further north of
Sangin was like the deepest we'd gone.

(01:00:35):
Unintentionally.
And what had happened, it's a town,a district center, and it's right
in the middle of it, it was a very,very dense town, and right in the
middle of it was a spire, and uh, thedistrict compound, which is where the
police were holed up and the leaders.
Now the Pathfinder platoon, they had beenin the vicinity of Musa Qala on the high

(01:01:00):
ground on the opposite side of the wadi,for want of a better phrase, driving past
one day and the, the district compoundwas under attack from the Taliban.
The Taliban had besieged thetown, the, the, the police and the
officials, the, uh, the, you know,the local police and the officials
in the center and the Pathfinderswent in to basically help them out.

(01:01:22):
What the Pathfinders quickly discovered,they got in there really easy, but
it's a really difficult place to getout of, you know, if you're going to
pick, if you, uh, if you were like a.
It's part of leadershiptraining, command training, and
you've got a map of Musakala.
And you said to the junior leader, hey,stick a pin on that map where you think
the worst possible place to defend it.
And you put a pin in the districtcompound every time, because You

(01:01:45):
know, there was in the compound walls.
I mean, it was maybe 500 meters square.
If that, if that various buildingsinside it, but the town itself, the
buildings and the shops and the townitself, the walls of those joined
straight onto the district compound wall.
So, you know, you could literally walkto the compound wall without being
seen by a century, you could get there,you know, there was a most joined

(01:02:08):
onto the walls, which had tunnels.
It was just a nightmare.
I find a way to help outdiscovered it was a problem.
And, and.
The Taliban knew the land andthey besieged the Pathfinders and
the Pathfinders couldn't get out.
So my first experience inMusa Qala was a battlefield.
a battle group operation, a hugeoperation, uh, to simply to bolster

(01:02:32):
the Pathfinders, uh, to sort of getthe Pathfinders out, put a mortar, a
mortar section there because we decidedwe're going to keep that ground.
Um, put a mortar section in there.
I think a team of Royal Irish were goingin and some Danish were going in there
and that was a battle group operation.
So the whole of I went in, saturated thebody, saturated the area, uh, secured

(01:02:54):
a, secured the, the, the main road upto the gate of the district compound,
you know, and then got the guys in, gotthe other guys out, um, fast forward a
few weeks and same as up again, theseguys are stuck in there, you can't
get any supplies in there, you can'tland helicopters because it's so hot.
No, there's no, there's no HLS.
It isn't covered by the Taliban.

(01:03:15):
And, um, and it was gettingpretty dire situation.
There was getting pretty dire.
Oh, you also had a, they had a, theyhad a sniper issue and there's been a
couple of headshots there as in BritishBritish casualties, and so that threat
gone on, it's just a real problem.
Right.
Kevin is they decidedthat they were going to.
Bolster up even more.

(01:03:35):
They were going to put a section of parasin a two sections of 16 paras, they were
going to put an element commander net.
So a company commander, uh, uh,a major, uh, from the paras.
And we landed, we endedup getting a helicopter.
And now how they set the ground, setthe scene for getting the helicopter.
And I don't know.
But we went in on a heli, it wasdusk and, um, oh, I think they must

(01:03:59):
have had loads, a Apache, Apache,probably got the Apaches I'm assuming.
I'm trying to work outnow why the Taliban.
resisted to attack and that, butit must've been the air cover up.
Later on, the air cover would bea real problem, I think, lack of.
We landed on, landed into the air, uh,dusk, dashed off the, uh, dashed off

(01:04:20):
the Chinook and Jared and I went in withthe OCE and the Sergeant Major and we,
we ended up basically saying, Hey, yougot to take in that room, stick a kit in
there and all hell broke loose, you know,just I think contact, like, but it was.
The noise is unbelievable.
There was, there was, at that point,there was 88 of us in there in total.

(01:04:44):
And the noise is unreal, likenothing I'd ever heard of and nothing
I've heard in terms of attack.
You know, we went outside, wedidn't know the lay of the land.
We hadn't been given a brief, hadn'tbeen given anything, just pick, blast,
grab their weapons, grab their belt.
But yeah, at night, at night we landedand it was pitch black and it was just,
the Taliban were attacking from threesides, uh, three sides just as the,

(01:05:06):
just as, as not as the sun had gonedown, but it literally got dark and we
got to the high ground and just, well,it was just the first thing we were
trying to do is to work out who was, whowas friendly, who was foe, because we,
there were central positions everywhere.
You are the Afghans and you neverknew what the Afghans are doing, if
they're fighting the right way or not.
There was one, there was onecentral position where, We

(01:05:27):
figured out they were firing out.
We figured out that was a,uh, a police central position.
I forgive me.
I can't remember if they were policeor army, but Afghan police position,
the sparks flying every time this guyfired, what transpired the next day
is this guy had a AK 47 with a badbarrel, but he didn't, he didn't fire.
Didn't bother him because hecouldn't get a replacement.
So he just fired his favorite sparks.

(01:05:49):
He wasn't hitting anything, right?
We went out.
Yeah.
We went out that night and uh, asquickly as it started, it was over.
It wasn't a long one.
And which was, which was pretty goodbecause we spent the entire time
trying to work out the fuck was wrong.
Like didn't know anything.
You know, it's like in the darktrying to work out who's what.
It was, it was crazy.
It was crazy.
Immediately we got there.

(01:06:10):
I remember when about a, about a week,no, two weeks later, we, we had a lot of.
Casualties.
And, uh, we had a, uh, a section,another section come in and
their first night was worse.
I remember talking to thesection commander, Bri Price,
a guy called Brian Price.
He go, same thing happened.
It all kicked off.

(01:06:30):
At this point, Jared and I hadfully vetted it and we were up
on a building called the Alamo.
Um, You know, engaging and Brian hasgone running into a central position
to check on his one of his guys in theright central position as he got hit by
an RPG, he'd be never 10 minutes, maybehe got blown straight out, blown straight
out because they could get so close.
They just a complete, they justcomplete superiority over this.

(01:06:52):
They get the walls, make athrow a gun at each other.
It was, it was almost embarrassinghow difficult it was to defend.
The only saving grace was, is that wedidn't choose that position, you know?
Um, Hey, what's it like in the positionyou're in just real quick, like how
far are the targets you're looking at?
It sounds like they'reright on top of you.
So like from a sniper position, how muchflexibility, freedom to maneuver, like

(01:07:16):
how far are the shots you're looking at?
Jared and I would put ourselves in aposition where we had, we had a length
to deal with the, the position, theareas where they could get right in
the walls and within meters, there weremultiple centuries positions for those.
We wouldn't concern ourselves with those.
So generally the distances we weredealing with or anything from.
Anything from 200 meters aspotential, you know, fire locations

(01:07:38):
up to 900, 800, 900, I'd say.
Yeah, 800, 900.
They ended up, they ended upstopping attacking at night.
I don't think they realizedhow strapped we were.
You know, we, we were running outof ammunition, just go back a step.
The situation with the battlegroup at the time was, we had

(01:07:59):
basically extended too far.
In hindsight, we extended too far.
We extended far enough, if the Talibanhasn't put up much of a fight, which
was what we expected them not to do.
Because they were so ferociouseverywhere we were, you know, we,
we just, they would attack multiple,multiple different times, multiple
different people at the same time.

(01:08:20):
And so very little air power, verylittle, uh, not air power, really a
superiority in terms of firepower,but in terms of troop carrying
capacity, very limited, very limited.
And so, um, we wouldn't be ableto ship troops around very much
and we will be able to get.
a lot of supplies in very easily and MusaKala being the northern most and the most

(01:08:42):
dangerous HLS you want to call it thatgrass patch HLS to go and land in they
were very lucky to land there becausethey didn't want to lose a helicopter
they already lost one earlier on the tourand they didn't want to lose another one
and it got to the point where the RAFdidn't want didn't want to fly in they
wouldn't fly in they wouldn't fly inthe only the only time they were flying
as if it was we had a we had a p1 Youknow, um, that's the only time, that's

(01:09:04):
the only time they did end up coming in.
Um, we were down to like a handfulof water rounds, um, small arms.
Wasn't too bad.
Uh, three, three ammunition.
Wasn't great.
Uh, food was.
Very little Russian left.
I was eating potatoes.
You know, we ended upgetting sacks of potatoes.
I lived on a potato diet for best partof two weeks, fried potato, get some more

(01:09:30):
potatoes for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Um, but it was, it wasthe intensity of it.
So they stopped, they ended upstopping attacking at night.
And I think that's, I don't know, Iactually know why they did that, but
throughout the day, you'd be talking.
Upwards of six, six complex, no, sixattacks a day of which multiple would be

(01:09:54):
complex attacks and for the, you know,the uninitiated complex attack is multiple
different types of weapon systems,multiple facts, usually anywhere from
six, seven, eight, nine, 10 times a day.
Those, those engagements could be, theycould last minutes or they could last,
you know, upwards, up to an hour, um,sometimes longer, often shorter, but

(01:10:15):
it's a different beast when you arecompletely at the mercy of the enemy.
There was nothing we could do tosuppress them other than shoot back.
Right.
I want to remember that it'snormally you'd have the advantage
of being able to go and patrol out,do offensive actions on foot, gain
ground, hold ground, dominate ground.

(01:10:37):
We weren't able to do that.
And the reason we weren't able to do itbecause it didn't have the manpower to be
able to go out in an effective operationwhilst leaving enough mountain power in.
the district compound to defendit and handle any casualties
we would inevitably get.
It was, it was a realproblem, a real problem.

(01:10:57):
So you basically just hadto wait for them, um, which
is, which is what happened.
But in a 12 day period, we took 55casualties and that was a combination
of British and British and Afghan.
There was three fatalities there.
There was, uh, six evacuations.
Uh, there was three Britishfatalities, I should say.
There was Afghan fatalities as well.

(01:11:18):
We didn't have to, we didn't haveto heli them out, you know, but, uh,
it's pretty demoralizing when it'sjust completely being ground down and
that's the first place, uh, first andlast time I ever felt fear there was
there and it was that helplessnessand it wasn't a general thing.
I found that at one point and whatthey, what they had done was because

(01:11:39):
we were, they weren't able to.
beat us very effectivelyin the small arms attacks.
You know, as you know, as we know inthese operations in Iraq and other
places, the enemy gradually changedtheir modus operandi from shooting at us.
They know we're really good atshooting back, killing them.
They changed it to like moreindirect weapons, weapons.
And they did it the same with Sakhalin.

(01:12:00):
They actually, they actually deployeda mortar team on a daily basis and
started using that more, more often.
And over a few days, they, theystarted bracketing us with, with
the mortar with the mortar team.
Um, and eventually every, everyround the fire could land inside the
compound or it was, it was, yeah,it was a real problem, real problem.

(01:12:22):
Um, we were taking casualtiesdoing that and it got to the point
where the OC Adam, Adam Jowett saidthat, you know, if there's a more
mortar attacked and everyone takeshard cover, no one's to go out.
Everyone thinks I'll coverexcept for two people.
I know it's two people, but Jaredmight, and the rationale being is
that we were best equipped to tryand spot these guys, obviously not

(01:12:44):
spot the more team because they'dbe, you wouldn't be able to see them.
They wouldn't be in line of sight, butto try and spot the spot, try and spot
the guy, Who's somewhere out there,that 360 degree arc of kilometers
of ground, you know, cause he wasn'tgoing to be in the town, uh, telling
them all the team went to fire.
And so, uh, What would have been theway for you all to get out of there?

(01:13:05):
Like, was it the decisionthat you're going to hold it?
Is that what I heard you say?
Like you, you're going to reinforceto kind of maintain that position
or the idea was you get enoughfirepower to, to get everybody out.
Initially it was to hold it.
Initially it was to hold it.
It was to, yeah, no, it was to hold it.
Which is why they put the more troopsin that battle group operation,
I spoke about is that could havebeen like pull everyone out.

(01:13:26):
Yeah.
It was okay.
We'll, we'll put more in there.
We'll hold it.
We're there now.
We'll kind of stay there.
Um, no, as time went on, we ended upbeing basically got, got past the point.
No, it got to a point where the,so the unit come in afterwards
to replace three power battlegroup was, it was the Marines.

(01:13:46):
Uh, I can't remember which commandounit it was, but it was the Marines
coming in and all I can assume, I'dhave to, I've got a guy coming on my
show, but it was the Sergeant Majorthere to talk about this to talk
about our own memories about things.
But I'm assuming that theysaid, We don't want it.
Like it's too far.
It's too many.
We can see what's going on.
You know, we don't want it.
So, uh, get your guys out.

(01:14:07):
Now, at that point, it got to a pointwhere, as you know, the, the unit
was getting ready to leave theater.
Now, what happens when you startto leave theater is you start
sending kit back and troops back.
It got to the point wherewe couldn't be pulled out.
They couldn't get us out.
They couldn't mount abattle group operation.
They didn't have the troops to do it.
The Marines coming in weren't ready todeploy because it's a handover period

(01:14:29):
and they have to get all their kit in andthey have to get all the normal stuff,
not the Marines fault, you know, anduh, they physically couldn't get us out.
We were still in there.
We're in three parallel back in the UK.
We were still in there.
Um, which was not the greatestfeeling in the world, to be honest.
Um, cause it begs the question,how the fuck do we get out?
And, and Guys werereally at their wits end.

(01:14:49):
There was, you know, there was, um,our light electronic warfare team, loot
team in there, in that battle group.
There was only 20 of themin total, 20 loot guys.
Uh, and what amazing dudes, right?
And on that tour, they lost, theylost five, five of the 20 were
killed, five of that small team,and they lost a quarter of them.

(01:15:11):
And two of those, one or twoof those were where we were.
No.
So those guys would just frag.
People were really ground down, um,understandably so, like besieged.
We wouldn't have called it at thetime a siege, but we came to call it
out after completely stuck in there.
So unbeknown to us.
As being the guys that were at the O.

(01:15:33):
C.
and the Sergeant Major.
Um, Uh, Negotiations hadstarted up with the Taliban.
Um, To decide what was to happen withthe town and how we would get out.
And the Taliban basically said, Okay, youget your guys out, we'll let you guys out.
In fact, we'll help you get them out.

(01:15:53):
Um, And in return, You don't comeback into Musa Qala, British forces.
And we won't take it over.
Wow.
And, uh, you know, obviously bollocks.
Yeah.
But
the fact that among them is wecouldn't say they're indefinitely
and the Taliban had all of thebargaining chips on their side.

(01:16:13):
You know, we were stuckand we needed to get out.
They knew how long we'd be there.
They're not stupid.
They know the routine.
They know the rotation.
So, um, so one morning, uh, onemorning the gates opened up.
And a bunch of, I forget how many,but we were called the Jingley trucks.
So cattle trucks, uh, driven by Afghans.

(01:16:35):
Up to this point, we'd had a ceasefire.
There'd be a ceasefire agree whilethese negotiations were coming on.
And they honoured it and we honoured it.
And, uh, these cattle trucksturned up driven by Afghanis
basically approved by the Taliban.
The Taliban organized these cattle trucksand, uh, the cattle trucks turned up.
We all, what's going on?

(01:16:55):
Or either way, I think we were leavinganyway, because the night before we'd
be told to sort of, or through thenight, the dark, we'd be told to get
rid of the sandbag, you know, dismantleall the defenses so the Taliban
couldn't use them and the rest of it.
We climbed the back of these cattletrucks and we were driven out by the,
you know, by the Taliban, all their, alltheir, their mates and the cattle trucks.
through the town, the, the routethrough the town that we drove,

(01:17:16):
or we were driven by the Afghans,was, um, like picketed by Afghanis.
Elders, Taliban.
Uh, it's like as a show of faith, hey,we're not going to blow you up because
we'd be blowing our own guys up on theside of the road if we do it as well.
And at the head of the, at the headof the column was a, a Hilux with
the Taliban commander in there.
With the OCA.

(01:17:36):
Yeah, yeah.
We'd driven out, it was like atwo hour, three hour drive into
the, into the desert, throughthe tower, into the desert.
Couldn't believe, couldn't believe it.
And the thing was though, I, Ideveloped insomnia up to that point.
I, I wasn't able to sleep.
Um, I put, I just putthat down to acute stress.
Um, so I can, I can't, I don't.
I can't describe any other reasonwhy we would be there, and I say
it's understandable to be honest.

(01:17:57):
But as soon as I got in that cattlewagon, because like Jared was in the
back, other guys were in the back, and Igot in the front with the Afghani's, you
know, pistol ready to go under my thigh,because I didn't know who these guys were.
Didn't know what was going tohappen, but, um, as soon as we
started driving, I got tired
and I felt like sleeping, you know,it was a kind of almost relief, but

(01:18:19):
you're also sitting in the soft seatand, uh, and, uh, well, I can try.
I don't know.
It was the hardest.
That was the hardest three hours of mylife trying to stay awake at the front.
Started trying to keep my eyes open.
It was horrific.
Joe was out into the desert.
Um, and at a point, uh, we all stopped,we all dismounted off the cattle trucks
and then walked over to walk over a bitof open ground to the, uh, to a couple
of Chinooks sitting there waiting forus and took me back to Camp Bastion.

(01:18:43):
Yeah.
And, uh, I, at the time we thoughtnothing of it, to be honest, we
were just relieved to get out there.
I'd been in there atthat point, two months.
The other guy's been theretwo and a half, three months.
You know, and a long time to be gettingtotally done over by, by the enemy, which
in reality is what it was, which is whyI mentioned earlier, you know, so what,

(01:19:03):
what should I really think about this?
Is there any pride to be had there?
Is this actually an embarrassingsituation that happened, you
know, or, or is it a mix?
Um, we got back to Camp Aston and wewere told, you won't talk about this.
You won't mention it.
As far as you're concerned,this didn't happen.
Wow.
Um, yeah, I remember we, we, we, that wasoutside, that was outside the cookout.

(01:19:25):
So I said the defect in Boston and thenwe didn't, we didn't talk about it.
Uh, for, um, the first I saw that beingmade public, so to speak, it was on
Wikipedia, 2009, three years later.
And there's even guys in, in three power.
I didn't know about it because, youknow, it's not something we hated and
we were in conversation with people.
We wouldn't go broadcast and thenwe'd have conversations, you know,

(01:19:46):
exchange your battle stories and stuff.
But, you know, 2006, 21st century, andThe way you get out of a theater of
war is because the enemy let you out.
In fact, the enemy drove you out.
It was probably the most, probablythe toughest time I had, actually.

(01:20:06):
That moment of fear I told you aboutwas, I said to you, Jared and I would,
Jared and I's job would be to go outat that point and get to high ground.
I'd run into the officer and say,where do you think they're coming from?
Where does it sound likethey're coming from?
They'd give an indication.
We'd decide where we were going to go.
in the compound and try and get anunderstanding of where the spotter may be.
We go running out into this, into the,you know, these mortars landing and

(01:20:29):
you know, we stand in the doorway.
He's still behind me in asandbag, sort of zigzag going
out, uh, shooting type of affair.
And uh, I turned around to givehim a little nod and it, you know,
he's a nod like, are you ready?
He's also not kind of a niceknowing you can we just, wow.
You do these things enough.
You sort of, you're wearing downyour odds of, of, of survival.

(01:20:52):
You know, you can run it out into more asrain down to account multiple times a day.
You kind of wearing down, you know,you're really cutting it fine here.
And he's gotten a point of understanding.
Yeah, we go out, but, but even then.
They, we stopped going out because therewas one particular incident where, uh,

(01:21:16):
two guys, two guys were killed by moredirect direct strike with a mortar.
We, we went up, we went up tothis, this particular building
inside the compound, uh, wherethey weren't applying on the radio.
We went up to go there to try andspot, spot up, take this guy out.
When we got there, the twoguys, you know, they were dying.
Um, And, uh, and so the OC was like,I can't, we can't lose anyone else.

(01:21:38):
We certainly can't lose the snipers.
The stuff that was going out, whichmeant that the next time the mortars
came in, Jared and I were also helpless.
You know, we just had to sit there.
We sat under the, you know,the archway of the door.
Was that even worse?
Horrific.
And that's, that's whatI mean about the fear.
You know, we were sittingthere and I thought this, these
rounds could hit this building.

(01:21:59):
There's nothing we can do about it.
We're just going to sit hereand hope it doesn't hit.
That's the first time I've everfelt helpless like that in a,
in a battle situation ever.
It was the first and lasttime I've ever felt like that.
Never want to feel it again becauseit was, You almost it's almost like
you can feel there's like panic therewhich wants to come like I could
be fucking killed here and there'sabsolutely nothing I can't run away.

(01:22:23):
I can't magic someamazing defenses on top.
I can't do anything else justcause I have to, it's not my time.
And I'm horrific.
You're so horrific, you know,and, uh, I wouldn't wish that
feeling on anyone to be honest.
I wouldn't wish that feeling on anyone.
I mean, how close were you, didyou and Jared become after that?
I mean, I got to imagine like every day.

(01:22:44):
Close, yeah.
Yeah, close, yeah.
Yeah, close, yeah.
We, we, yeah, we close.
Yeah.
We're still close today, you know?
Um, funnily enough, yeah.
I was talking actually to the sergeantmajor that I went up to see him, you
know, they haven't seen him in 10years and we've been talking about it.
And, um, Jared has almost completely,he would disagree with this fight,

(01:23:05):
Jared has almost completely suppressed.
Uh, the worst aspects of that time ofSukama and I, I've, I've discovered this
a few years ago when we were, we weretalking, me, him and a couple of others
and, and his recollection of things wasa wildly, wildly different, which is not
abnormal or traumatic circumstances, but.

(01:23:26):
He, he doesn't remember anythingbeing bad, which is, couldn't
be any further than the truth.
Um, I was, like I said, Iwas talking to Sergeant Major
about this and he said, what?
I said, he doesn't, he doesn't, I don'tthink he remembers what it was like.
I mean, I think he's literally pushedit aside, pushed it aside, which is,

(01:23:47):
um, I don't have a discord mechanism.
I mean, he's fine.
He's a really chilled out, chilledout, relaxed guy living a loving life.
And that's how it is.
That's how you want toremember and not remember it.
It's fine by me, you know, but, um,yeah, we became, we became close.
He's a good guy.
We were lucky on that tourwith the snipers anyway.
He was just, We had really good guys.

(01:24:08):
We had really good guystouched, uh, in, in the team.
And we actually got bolstered up.
We wanted more numbers.
Um, we wanted more snipers, uh, goingonto that tour for obvious reasons.
And we couldn't get them.
So we got bolstered up withbasically reservists and a mix of
reservists, a couple of reservists.
Yeah.

(01:24:29):
We would call them reservists and,um, a couple of brand new privates
from rifle companies literallyhad been in three a few months.
They gave us those guys.
We were lucky in that every singleone of them and then someone
almost like the material maybe.
Absolutely.
We're not every single one of thembrought something to the party.

(01:24:49):
It's kind of the first time I learneda lesson that every single person
has value somewhere and you only seemto discover that when you're forced,
someone's force on your team and youhave to, okay, we have to work with this.
I don't like it.
If not, you haven't got theexperience, you know, but every
single, every single one of them, Istarted to bring to the party and.
That wasn't always something soldierwise, you know, there was, um, there

(01:25:12):
were two, there were two energy gunners.
We got given a really young,real wet behind the ears.
And one of them was great on the energy.
You know, he's superb.
The other one was average on theLNG, but his personality was amazing.
He was just, he was just, you know, soyou had these guys be working on this.
I, it's a lesson I took forward with me.
Okay.
Everyone's got something.

(01:25:32):
You've got to find it.
Not everyone is a total moron.
Yeah, that's one place.
And you say, would you go back?
I think no, I wouldn't go back.
No, I mean, that's, that sounds rough.
Even the exit there just soundslike, you know, storybook material.
Um, Hugh, the other, the other thing that,uh, the individual who reached out to me
said to ask you about, I don't know ifit was 08 or 2010, but said that you got

(01:25:55):
a, an award for gallantry at some point.
I don't know what the contextis and you're probably tired of
telling it, but I'd love to hear.
I know he's asking these questions.
I know he's asking.
I need to protect my sources.
Yeah, that was 2008.
Uh, so in 2008, we would, we wereconducting strike operations out
of Kandahar, uh, it was real fun.

(01:26:17):
So when I say we were conductingstrike operations at a Kandahar, it
was three power in Kandahar, and wewould basically go out on relatively
short missions, looking for high valuetargets either to kill or capture, um,
sometimes it'd be a I was, uh, sometimesit'd be a few weeks on the ground,
depending on what we're trying to do.
Sometimes you go out in supportof SF operations or us operations.

(01:26:40):
One of the areas we went to was, uh,we went to bolster to power who are
out at the same time as, as not at all.
And they were in, and they were ina fob called the company who had to
bolster in a fob called fob income,which was probably the tastiest.
the most kinetic Bob of all of them,uh, to about a half of that time, uh,

(01:27:02):
huge amount of greens on the cover.
Um, the Taliban were very active thereand we went out, we put a company in
there and we went out to, yeah, basicallyadd an additional fighting force.
I mean, we, I mean, we're fresher.
You know, we haven't been grounddown by months and increments.
So we were able to go a bitdeeper into the green zone.
So yeah, we ended up in a, on a missioninto the green zone, quite deep in one

(01:27:26):
day in the afternoon and my team saw,I had my sniper team there and it was
five people, the company is split intothree platoons and they were sort of
pepper potting forward two at a timethrough, through this, through a village.
Somehow the Taliban hasmanaged to get themselves.
Between the two platoons andthe out on in the outskirts.

(01:27:51):
Now, I'm not sure how they did it becausethe platoons weren't that far apart.
I think maybe they were inculverts or they were underground.
You know, I don't, I'm not sure.
And they opened up real, real close,real close quarters, um, real close
quarters and quite a lot of them,and took us real, really by surprise.
Took the two right betweenreally by surprise.

(01:28:12):
The way this why I wasworking the snipers was.
We would move with those front platoons.
So it'd be two of us with oneof the platoons, three with the
other platoon, but we would.
Um, occupy the high ground andtry and scan forward for enemy
incoming enemy, enemy, enemy fire.
It's now when this happened, theywere obviously right amongst us.

(01:28:34):
And we had, so on, on my side of thecompany, the compound I was on, my
two guys, Jared and another guy calledMatt Turner, who sadly got killed,
ended up with the SAS, got killed inSyria, sadly about five years ago.
And he, uh, in fact, working with Deltaand he, uh, uh, between our compound and
the, other common with other team wasthe other two was with trees you couldn't

(01:28:56):
see them like out of line of sight longstory short the the shock of the uh
that initial contact from in betweenus um took took some of the some of the
guys by surprise and because it was soclose quarters they literally couldn't
get their heads above the parapet to beable to fire back at the enemy you're
shooting down at the at the enemy inthe in the culverts there And also the,

(01:29:19):
the Taliban started engaging from a treeline off to my flank, our team's flank
at the outsides, there were fire comingfrom within, fire coming from without,
we couldn't see the other platoon to makesure we weren't engaging our own guys.
Yeah, it was, it was, I don'tthink the Taliban intended it that
way, it was just luck, just luck.
Yeah.
Just luck.
But, but, um.

(01:29:41):
I sent the two guys, my two guysonto the tree line and onto another
building where we re engaged from.
In fact, the other building we re engagedfrom, the Taliban fighter popped up
from there and he had full uniform.
And I don't mean, Police uniform.
He was wearing a camouflageshirt and a helmet.
I'd never seen that before.
I'd never seen that before.

(01:30:01):
Um, he was pretty close though.
He's a moron.
He's got 50 meters and Mark took him out.
Um, so I sent my two guys thereon to watch that tree line.
Uh, cause that was prettyaccurate fire coming from there.
I'm pretty sure that was a marksmansniper of some sort, you know, someone
with a bit of sense around him.
Um, then I took a kneeand I was trying to.
work out what my other team wasdoing, what the fuck was going on,

(01:30:25):
uh, to try and get a handle on things.
We're talking with maybe secondsinto this now, seconds, maybe 20
seconds into this, you know, howquickly things are going, things go.
And I looked to my rear and that Ispotted that wall on the roof where
our guys were, where they literallycouldn't get their heads up to fire back.

(01:30:46):
And it was just the fire comingfrom the top was overwhelming.
Um, RPG came over at one point,uh, as I was running across.
And the reason I ran across it because I
think from experience before theteam there who was like pinned down,
they were not the most experienced.
I know which I knew, which, whichunit they were part of with a

(01:31:06):
subunit within three power, andthey were not the most experienced.
And some of the guys were brand new.
And I think they were a bitof shock going on there.
And, uh, you know, one of the GPMG gunnerswas pinned down himself in the middle of
them in the middle of the roof, couldn'tget up because of the fire coming in.
And, uh, We need to regain initiative.
Otherwise we start losing casualties.
If you let it go on like that,they just, the Taliban is going to

(01:31:27):
start manoeuvring out manoeuvres.
So I, I, I, I I basically ended up, um,rallying the troops, for want of a better
word, I, I left my guys, uh, came outof cover, ran across the roof, I picked
up the GPMG as I ran across, RPG wentoff overhead as I was going, and, um,

(01:31:49):
And got the guy and said to the guy,get up, follow me, come with me,
come with me, go over to the wall.
Went down behind the wall with aGPMG, give the GPMG back to him
and shouted at the guys who werelike crouching down and said, get
up, you know, start fucking firing.
And I stood up and started firing.
I don't know, I can't stop fuckingfire over to stop starting engaging.

(01:32:14):
You know, it's like, as soon as youstart engaging back, it immediately, it
immediately puts the enemy off firinganymore, especially if you hit them.
So, you know, it's, it did just, itputs a stop in it up to that point.
That's three rain.
Um, so I spent my time.
Riding around the roof there, gettingthe g, getting the guys from the rifle.
It was the rifle section with, uh, andthe, uh, and uh, the team basically

(01:32:37):
engaged back, regain the, regain theinitiative, which also allowed the, the
compound opposite to get a handle onwhat was going on, identify with anyway.
'cause I could ate, communicate acrossthere and, um, and then get back over to
Jared and Matt and, uh, I mean, that's it.
That's it in a nutshell.
It's one of those, you've got agallantry and what for it, but you

(01:32:58):
know, it's kind of doing your job.
I don't, I don't see anything grand init and I probably boiled it down to a
much smaller thing than what it may haveactually seen to other people on the day.
But, um, to me it was pretty rapidnecessity, you know, and, and experience.
And I think if you're not a commanderis going to be willing to do that.

(01:33:18):
You know, you shouldn't be a commander,but, but there's probably something there
about, you just need somebody to leadand show you in the heat of the moment.
I mean, I think you hear that sooften in training, but that's, that
is like the real world applicationof, it could have gone real long.
I could have been killed.
I could be, I could have gonereal long and then there's nothing
gallantry or then that's dead.
Hugh.

(01:33:39):
And, uh, you still got the same problemyou had before he was that kind of that
risk versus award element, isn't it?
But, you know.
I think the first tour really set me upfor that understanding of, you need to
act quick, you need to act hard and fast,aggressive immediately, immediately,
calculate it, not craziness, calculateit, you know, identify where the enemy

(01:34:02):
are and overwhelm them immediatelywith superior firepower, which you
can do almost all the time in thesesituations, almost all of the time.
And it's even more important whenyou're operating in somewhere like
Afghanistan or Iraq, uh, where, whereyou, where's counterinsurgency because.
The enemy can always move faster thanyou can always move faster than you.
They've always, alwaysgot resources to hand.

(01:34:24):
They don't have to worry about gettingback to camp or staying out overnight
with all the kit and all the ammunition,all the rest need to carry on.
They're used to that area.
They know the area.
So it's even more important.
But, um, probably what you did for thosefour or five guys, you know, like if that
was their first real contact and theyjust sat there behind the wall and nothing
happened, like they didn't engage, youknow, probably a very different experience

(01:34:46):
next time they're in a firefight.
That's a, yeah, I think, I think with him,it was, it was, it was less like shock.
It was, it wasn't freeze.
It was more waiting tobe shown what to do.
Yeah.
You know?
And again, I think that comes withthe initiative comes with experience

(01:35:09):
and especially if it is effort couldwell have been the first contact.
I don't like that, but again, thatclose, it's a pretty frightening thing.
It's just a pretty frightening thing,you know, um, yeah, well, I mean,
everyone should, a lot of people shouldgo under water, but no, not just me.
So Hugh, you've done H hour, right?

(01:35:30):
For how many years now?
Five, I think.
Six.
What got you started on it?
Uh, I want, I want it to, I want itto communicate useful information to
people who may need it, if I want toboil it down in a sentence, it's taken
me six years to work out how to answerthat question you just asked, right?
And you're the first personI couldn't answer to.
That's what I wanted to do in reality.
Yeah.
I, I started up in 2019.

(01:35:52):
I left the military in 2011.
Between 2011 and 2019, I had some prettymiserable times, turbulent times, for
a bunch of reasons I won't go into now,uh, uh, uh, You know, which greatly
affected my mental health as oneexample, as many people get affected by.
Um, I learned Lotus, uh,there's stuff I learned going
through those difficult times.

(01:36:13):
I thought, man, if I'd known this before,I wouldn't have had those difficult times.
I'd known easily.
I'd heard someone else talkingabout X, Y, or Z thing.
And sometimes it was.
You know, some things are like juststuff to do with profession and work and
industry and you know, things like that.
Uh, so that's what I started up.
I started up, um, to chat as youand I are chatting now, and I've

(01:36:34):
really enjoyed this by the way.
Yeah.
As you and I are chatting now withother guys and girls of like minded
people, similar backgrounds is tryingto work out, seek out the stories and
the information, the insights that couldinform me and help us in the process.
Thanks.
Thanks.
That's how it started out.
Yeah, that's why I started it.
I think it serves that purpose.

(01:36:55):
Hard question here.
It's like choosing your favoritechild, but are there a couple
that you point people to?
You know, like you've got a bigcatalog, like would you say?
Oh, it depends what you want.
It depends what you're after.
So if, if, uh, if people want to talkabout, uh, PTSD or TBI is hot topic at
the moment, I point them to a coupleof episodes there, which, uh, so.
I mean, TBIs are a hot topic andover in the States and especially

(01:37:19):
TBI related to PTSD and military,and there's actually an amazing guy.
I recommend getting him onif you take your interest.
It's American guy, a guy called Dr.
Mark Gordon, Mark Gordon.
And he, I think he's one ofRogan's physicians actually,
but he is, he is leading theresearch and treatment of TBIs.

(01:37:42):
Uh, into, uh, blast TBIsand PTSD related symptoms.
And in fact has also, um, developed a,developed a methodology where you can
supplement with natural supplementsand basically reduce the likelihood of
you being impacted like by PTSD or TBI.

(01:38:05):
When you go and, I don't know,stick a mousehole charger door
whenever I know he's working with us.
I said to Mark Gordon, MandyBostwick is a, is a British radio.
He works with.
I'm a 99 and for the TVI stuff,if you want psychedelics, I've
interviewed a lot of psychedelicsresearchers on the subject of, you
know, um, mental ill health recovery.
Uh, yeah, it depends what people ask.

(01:38:26):
Perfect.
If you want some politics, there'sa Farage, Nigel Farage interview.
Okay.
All right.
Um, let me, let me ask you,there's two questions I try to
ask everybody at the end here, andthen I'll get you out of your hue.
So one is, Was there anything that youcarried with you when you were deployed
that had sentimental value, good luck,charm, just something that somebody

(01:38:47):
gave you that you wanted to have on you?
Yeah.
On oh six, when I went out on that tour,uh, before that tour, a, a person who
was close to me at the time, a lady hadgiven me a, a guardian angel, silver,
silver guardian angel, um, quite big.

(01:39:07):
And, um, I had that taped to my dog tags.
When I went out, it was a little bittoo big, a little bit uncomfortable
sometimes, but I carried that with me.
And I also carried, uh, St.
Christopher, not St.
Christopher.
Um, yeah, St.
Christopher.
Yeah.
Yeah.
St.
Christopher.
Probably.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, no, no, no.
St.
Michael.

(01:39:27):
No, St.
Michael.
St.
Michael.
Okay.
The patron saint of, well, we sayit's the patron saint of paratroopers.
I think it's the patron saint ofarmed forces or something like that.
St.
Michael at the time, I was quiteinto those things at the time.
Less so, less so now.
And then, you know, looking back, I knowwe didn't even scratch the surface on a

(01:39:47):
lot of your stories and, and, you know,the time afterwards, but just looking
back on those times and you've alludedto it a little bit, people you lost.
You know, the fear, um, everything youwent through, would you do that again?
Almost all of it.
Well, absolutely.
Absolutely.
You know, um,
as difficult and as challengingthe times were during and after,

(01:40:10):
you know, reconciling some of thestuff, dealing with some of the
stuff and just losing people inthings I wasn't even involved with.
Uh, yeah, I would, you know,uh, I, I like who I am today.
And I wouldn't be who I am today if Ihadn't have gone through those things, the
good and the bad, the good and the bad,and, uh, you know, I've got two amazing
daughters, I've got good people in mylife, and I wouldn't have them if, if, if,

(01:40:32):
if my life had been different before, so Iwouldn't want to risk changing any of it.
I wouldn't be here.
I wouldn't be here ifI were talking to you.
That's true.
As crazy as that is, where canpeople find you on social, we'll have
everything in the description, but any,anything you want to point people to?
Yeah, no, it's the, uh, so the podcast,HR, HR podcast, charliecharlie1.

(01:40:57):
com is the website,but just search for HR.
I'm on X mainly at HughKeer, H U G H K E I R.
Um, yeah, the website, the podcastand my personal profile on X,
feel free to reach out to me.
Hope you enjoyed it.
And, uh, appreciate it.
Appreciate you giving me the opportunity.
Ryan.
This is awesome.
Thanks so much.

(01:41:17):
Yeah.
I've only got time for the Apache pilot.
Oh, I love it.
I love it.
Thanks for listening to this combat story.
Hope you enjoyed this one with, uh, withHugh, interesting character for sure.
And I think for people who like combatstory, you're going to appreciate
H hour, his podcast, of course.
Um, I had never heard as you, as youprobably noticed, um, or I'd never

(01:41:40):
really heard in depth about the,uh, the siege that he was a part of.
I had heard of it, butnever somebody from it.
Um, And it was interesting to hearhow he wrestled with the outcome of
that, the aftermath, being driven outby the very people who were pinning
him in, um, and then how the, howleadership may have perceived or asked
people to handle that going forward.

(01:42:01):
Very interesting, for sure.
Um, for those who, uh, would like to getour newsletter, you can go to combatstory.
com slash newsletter to subscribe.
It's a weekly one that we send outthat just has updates about episodes.
Episodes we're looking back on, what'scoming up, um, some interesting history
facts, maybe something I'm watchingor reading just to share out with
y'all who share similar interests.

(01:42:23):
Thanks for taking the time to listen.
Hope you appreciated this one andwherever you are in the world,
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Elite UK Para Sniper Hugh Keir | Surviving the Siege of Musa Qala | Gallantry Award

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Elite UK Para Sniper Hugh Keir | Surviving the Siege of Musa Qala | Gallantry Award